Second Oomph sim cancelled out of the blue?

[tehjumpingjawa]

This evening, out of the blue I received an email titled "Your Virgin Mobile cancellation"

Email body:

"Your request to leave Virgin Mobile has gone through. 
 
Hello [myName], 
 
We've got your request to cancel your Virgin Mobile contract. Everything's sorted. 
 
We'll cancel your contract on 30/10/2021 - 15/12/2021 as requested. Until then, we'll bill you as normal and you'll have Unlimited Minutes, Unlimited Texts, 5 GB Data to use a month as usual. 
 
Any usage outside of your allowance will be charged at standard network rates. 
 
Kind regards, 
The Virgin Media team "

This email is a blatant falsehood; I made no such cancellation request!

Moments later I received a second email titled "Oomph BUndle" (Incorrect capitalization of the 'U' would indicate this email was sent manually)

Email body:

"Changes to your Oomph SIM

Hello,
 
We’ve been doing some routine checks and noticed you had too many SIMs included in your Oomph bundle. We’ve now sorted things out so you’re getting the right service.
 
What this means for you
 
In 30 days your mobile plan for {[myFirstOomphSimNumber]} will become deactivated; after this date you will no longer be able to use your Virgin Mobile services on these SIM(s). Up until this date you will still be able to switch out your number. You can find out how to switch out here. We will retain your Oomph tariff on [mySecondOomphSimNumber].
 
If you’ve got one of our handset Freestyle plans we’ll try to keep the Oomph SIM included in your bundle. If you’ve got more than one of these, we’ll move the extra one(s) onto an equivalent Pay Monthly SIM and your monthly loan amount will stay the same.
 
Got a question about this change? Please give us a call on 0345 454 1111*. For help and support, just head here.

Kind regards,

The Virgin Media team"

I had this second SIM added to my contract around a month ago when I renewed my contract for a further 18 months. At the time I was not told of any kind of limit on the number of oomph SIMs I could have. In fact I explicitly mentioned that I already had a SIM attached to my broadband account, and that I wanted a second.

If I'd have been made aware that adding a second SIM to my contract would invalidate the first SIM, I might very well have not renewed my contract with Virgin, as two SIMs is an absolute necessity for me.

Either through incompetence, or malice, this is blatant misrepresentation in order to ensnare a customer in an extended contract term.

I will be contacting CS tomorrow to follow-up on this, but in the meantime I'd like to hear if others have experienced similar, and what the best remedy is?

[enlli]

To my knowledge you can only have one free Oomph SIM . Anything else must be on a separate contract

[tehjumpingjawa]

Neither Oomph SIM was free; the first added £5/month to my contract, the second £4/month.

This is besides the point though; I entered into a contract that was contingent upon having 2 SIMs.
It appears Virgin are now unilaterally cancelling one of them.

[Steven_L]

Hey @tehjumpingjawa,

Welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to post here on the forums.

I can see that you have spoken to the team about this since you last posted, have they been able to resolve the issues and keep both of the sims activated?

Regards,

Steven_L

[tehjumpingjawa]

No, I spent nearly 4 hours on live chat with the only resolution being that I'd need to  "call our dedicated oomph team".

By far the worst Customer Service I've ever experienced; huge waiting times, bounced between multiple assistants, 5-10 minute waits between each message, and ultimately the problem was left unresolved.

A thoroughly infuriating waste of my time trying to solve a problem not of my creation.

[Lee_R]

Hi tehjumpingjawa thanks for getting back to us.

I am really sorry for the experience you've reported in communicating with our customer contact centres.  Just clarify when you say a 2nd SIM do you mean both SIMS should be under the same oomph umbrella?

Regards

Lee_R

[tehjumpingjawa]

From the perspective of a customer I honestly don't care about product names, nor how it's organized on Virgin's side.

I'm just after two SIMs that have independent phone numbers (One for me, one for my elderly Mum), that are both billed alongside the broadband.

Until one of the SIMs was inexplicably cancelled, this is what I believe I had (and was perfectly happy with):

• M100 broadband & landline £23.50/m
• 15GB Oomph SIM +£4/m
• 5GB Oomph SIM +£5/m (<- this is the one that's been cancelled)

I'd be most grateful if this could be resolved without me having to sit in yet another CS helpdesk queue; can you just undo the cancellation?

[Zach_R]

Hi @tehjumpingjawa,

Did you make any adjustments to your broadband/TV/landline package recently, or to your knowledge have you had that package/deal for a while?

Thanks,
 

[tehjumpingjawa]

As mentioned in my first post; about a month ago I contacted Virgin because I wanted a second SIM adding to my contract.

I didn't want to spend more than £5/m for the extra SIM, and after a long conversation with the sales assistant he eventually found a way of getting a £4/m 15GB oomph SIM added to my contract, but said it would require the broadband contract be renewed for a further 18 months.

My original contract (started roughly 12 months ago), was broadband + £5/m 5GB oomph.

It appears to me as though renewing my original contract & attaching this new oomph SIM has invalidated the previously attached oomph SIM. Something I was never warned about.

[Zach_R]

Hi @tehjumpingjawa,

Thank you for expanding. I'm going to send you a private message in a few moments so we can take a few extra details from you and have a closer look at things to see what's going on.

Please respond to this at your earliest convenience and we can go from there.

Thanks,